Little Big Town funnels changes, growth into ‘The Reason Why’

Click to see a gallery of Little Big Town photos (this image: James Minchin III).

In the three years since their last album release, much has changed for platinum-selling country quartet Little Big Town. The group switched record labels, toured with some of the biggest acts in country music, had babies and crafted an album they believe could be a turning point in their 12-year career.

That album — harmony-driven 12-song collection The Reason Why — hits stores Tuesday, August 24, and its lead single, “Little White Church,” is already approaching the Top 10 on Billboard’s country singles chart.

“We are confident enough to say we worked really hard on this and that it deserves a chance to be heard,” Little Big Town member Karen Fairchild said last week, seated on a couch with her band mates in their management’s East Nashville office. “We hope the songs mean to people what they mean to us. We would love for this to be the record that takes us to the next level.”

Hard work pays off

For Fairchild and the rest of her band — husband Jimi Westbrook and fellow singers Kimberly Schlapman and Phillip Sweet — working really hard on Reason meant a slow, painstaking process and an underlying rule: everyone had to be “over the moon” about each song, Schlapman said, or it was tossed.

“We wanted something stellar,” she said. “We wanted to sound like the Little Big Town everyone is familiar with, but we wanted to do things a little differently and grow a little bit.”

Part of that growth meant showcasing new sounds and experimenting with arrangements and recording techniques. The group hired Jeff Balding to engineer Reason, and he worked with the band to capture the vocal energy of their live shows, the four members singing together in the studio just like they do in concert.

“There’s more energy (that way) versus everyone doing individual passes on the mike,” Schlapman said. “Listeners might not realize that records are normally cut in so many parts and that normally every vocal is recorded separately, so this is just different, and very enjoyable.”

That approach comes to the fore on fourth track “Shut Up Train,” Fairchild said, as the opening acoustic guitar leads into the four singers “just going for it at the same time, like it was a performance.”

“We were trying to catch the magic,” she said.

Single “Little White Church” offers some of what Fairchild considers The Reason Why’s “ear candy:” The song kicks off with her lone vocal, then incorporates the group’s harmonies, a naked handclap and a vocal slap delay. (Watch the video for that tune below.)

“It’s kind of different and a little bit odd, but . . . we like that,” Fairchild said. “We are fun people. We can be serious about our music, but we don’t take ourselves so seriously that we can’t have a good time.”

On the road with family

While Fairchild and hus-band Jimi Westbrook were in the studio recording the album, they were also preparing for a new addition at home: Son Elijah Dylan was born March 5.

The couple was the last holdout on the Little Big Town family front. Schlapman and her husband Stephen welcomed daughter Daisy Pearl in July of 2007, and Sweet and his wife Rebecca had daughter Penelopi Jane in December of 2007.

“It’s really interesting because of the transition that was happening professionally, it was a really great time to bring children into our lives,” Sweet said. “We were still working so hard, but now I’m glad we got that under our belt, in a way, because this next step — having this new album coming out — is a whole different journey. It’s a goal for us to be a big headline act, and we’re moving in that direction. We want to see this album grow us into that.”

When the group hits the road to play shows and promote The Reason Why, the new additions will join the crowded and often cluttered living quarters on the tour bus — spouses and children are always along for the ride. The band members joke that baby bottles, burp cloths and toy princesses have replaced the wine that once flowed freely on the bus.

“You come in during the day and toys could be from one end of the bus to the other,” Westbrook said.

Transporting their brood by air — with guitars, gear and all the children’s stuff — has its challenges, too. But the band mates said they work hard to make sure they accommodate their families and touring crew. And, for the most part, they said the kids have adapted to the lifestyle.

Sweet laughed about his daughter falling sleep in the middle of their bustling dressing room on a recent tour stop, and Fairchild said that when Elijah went to sleep backstage a few nights earlier, they parked his stroller in a shower stall so he could sleep undisturbed amid the hub-bub.

“We wake each other’s babies up on accident all the time,” Fairchild said. “We just have to be resilient about it, that it’s going to happen. You have to be flexible. You can’t be rigid if your baby is going to live on the road.”

Sweet said being surrounded by family — looking over to the side of the stage at night and seeing his daughter dancing with Schlapman’s and Elijah decked out in his baby headphones — is more than worth the adjustments that have to be made.

“We feel like one big family,” he said. “We want to grow that and nurture that, our big family. We have a lofty goal: We want to have a beautiful family and be able to marry that with our road life and have fun doing it, and stay together.”